Diwali in Pictures!

It's Diwali in India and I thought I'd give Vegan MoFo a peek into what it is like here in India right now.

Diwali is a once in a year phenomenon in India that goes on for almost a week. The roads are full of people, the shops are decked to attract maximum crowds, lanterns and lights adorn balconies and the kitchen is a mess! It's that time of the year when you get together with family and eat from the time to wake up till the time you sleep. It also involves a lot of noise and bad air in the form of pollution, but I have to admit, this has been one of the quietest Diwalis I have experienced so far and that is such a boon.

This post is a dedication to all the women who toil day and night in the kitchen to make the best traditional recipes for their visitors. It's also for all those people who did not burst crackers. All the birds and animals thank you!

This post is more of a picture essay of my Diwali day spent with the best cooks in my family making the best food. 

A Common sight in most houses - Chivda (Flattened rice which is roasted and seasoned with mustard seeds, coriander seeds, turmeric, green chillies, peanuts and dried coconut) 

Baby Potatoes with mustard seeds, turmeric and red chilli powder 

My grandmother making a vegan Chakkai Payasam (Jackfruit Pudding in Coconut Milk)

The vegan Chakkai Payasam

Fried Plantain Chips 

My Lunch! Clockwise from top: Baby Potato Curry, Appam, Rice and Mung Dal Pongal, Avial, Spicy Potato Chips, Kosumalli

A very potent Diwali 'Medicine' (Ginger, Jaggery and Coriander)

My sister's Payal 

Athai's Kolam (A fine powder is made with rice and geometric designs are made outside houses every morning. On festival days, the designs get bigger and elaborate. These geometric designs are considered to invite special energies in to the houses and also serve as food for the ants!)

My mother's Kolam (I forgot to click a picture during the day!)

By night, everyone lights tiny lamps and candles all over the house and outside.

 My sister made that lantern!

Probably the best time to play with Bokeh

Neighbour's Hand Painted Lantern

Another neighbour's terracotta lampost

Starry Lantern

Firecrackers in the sky

My apartment complex

My contribution to Diwali - Carrot Payasam with Cashew Milk

An unfortunate end to my Diwali - a tree on fire. I hope they managed to put that out.

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Mushroom and Bean Burgers from scratch

This is the actual name of the burger: 'Shroom-Kidney-Horse-Sage Burgers with Pesto smeared Hand Made Buns. :)

Sounds corny, I know. Who would've thought you could have them all in one sentence!

I desperately wanted to eat a burger! Having never made one from scratch, I thought it was apt specially because BBC's Good Food Magazine was launching and they'd asked us to come up with something that we've never done.

I hate the burger breads you get in the stores. The bread we get here is thoroughly refined and seasoned with lots of dough conditioners, improvers and preservatives. Let me tell you, once you make whole wheat bread at home, you will cringe every time you eat so called 'whole wheat' bread outside.

It had to be a veggie burger and I absolutely did not want to put potatoes in! Such a misconception the Mc Ds of the world have created!

Here's what you need:

For the Bread:

500gm Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp Instant Yeast
2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Sugar
1/3rd cup oil
Warm water
Herbs of your choice (I used fresh Oregano and Thyme)
Sesame/ Flax Seeds (optional)

Mix all the dry ingredients.

Stir in the water and add till you get a nice workable dough. Add in the oil and knead for about 5 minutes.

Cover it with cling film and let it rest for about one and a half hours or till the dough is now almost double in size.

Preheat your oven now to about 180C

After that, punch the dough down and knead for another five minutes. Add in the herbs and make them into burger bun shapes but flatten the tops. Brush on some water and sprinkle sesame and flax seeds.

Let it rest for ten minutes and pop them in the oven for about 30 minutes till they are golden brown and sound hollow when you knock on them.

Notice the lack of sesame seeds? They all fell off because I brushed the top with oil instead of water! Nevertheless, a tasty burger bun.

For the Burger Patty:


1 cup horsegram (soaked for 4 hours and cooked)
1 cup Red Kidney BEan (soaked for 8 hours and cooked)
1/2 cup Soya chunks (soaked for an hour and bolied for ten minutes)
1 steamed carrot
(you can add other vegetables like steamed potatoes, peas, pumpkin, etc)


1 Onion diced
2 cloves of Garlic
1/2 a Red Pepper diced
15 Button Mushrooms diced
Fresh or dried Sage
Salt
Pepper
A Few sprinkles of Habanero Tobasco Sauce (Because i like it spicy)
A dash Soy Sauce
Oil or water for sauteeing

Saute the onion and garlic in oil or water. Add the Red Pepper, Habanero Tobasco, Soy Sauce and Sage. Add the mushrooms.

Mash the cooked beans with a potato masher. Cut up the soy chunks and carrot. Add them all in to the pan with the mushrooms and mix well. Take it off the flame and start making the patties.

Cook each side of the pattice on a flat pan or a grill till crispy and brown.

 The Assembly:

You need any or all of the below:

Pre-made Pesto (I use fresh Basil, cashew, salt, garlic and olive oil)
Jalapenos
Sliced Yellow and Green Peppers
Sliced Cucumbers
Sliced Tomatoes
Mustard
Ketchup

Assemble and enjoy!

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Pickle me up! - DIY Daikon n' Mustard Pickle

Who doesn't love pickles?! They could be sweet, salty, sour, oily and spicy too. All those lovely flavours in a jar. I've never really tried to pickle anything even though I love them and associate some lovely food memories with pickles. Of all the pickles a few of my favourites are a vegetable pickle my paternal grandma makes, the spicy mango my maternal grandma makes, a very north indian Carrot-Turnip-Cauliflower pickle which was sent to my room mate in Auroville and a very mustard-y Bengali Mango pickle made by Naturellement.

For two weeks in a row I saw giant White Radishes / Daikons (Moolis) in the market. And by giant I mean really big, like over a foot long. I couldn't resist picking it up. Having never pickled anything, I decided to use my memory of the taste of the Bengali Mango pickle and use the radish. I ended up with a huge jar of lovely yellowy radish pickle.

I must warn you though, open the jar of pickle in another room before serving it. The inital smell every time you open the bottle can put people off, but luckily that lasts only for a few minutes.

You need:

One White Raddish

1tsp Mustard Seeds (Rai)

1tsp Cumin Seeds (Jeera)

1tsp Fenugreek Seeds (Methi)

1tsp Aniseed (Sauf)

1/2 tsp Asafoetida powder (hing)

1/2 tsp Dry Mango Powder (amchur)

1/2 tsp Turmeric (haldi)

1tsp Red Chilli Powder

Salt

1/2 cup Oil

Wash and dry the radish. Cut it up into juliennes (long thin strips).

In a wok, dry roast the mustard, cumin, fenugreek and aniseed will they are fragrant. Powder them till they are fine. Once it is cool, mix in the asafoetida, dry mango powder, tumeric, red chilli powder and salt.

Add in the oil and mix it with the radish strips. A lot of pickle recipes I've read ask you to keep the jar in the sun for a day. I don't get too much sunlight at home, so I just left it out on the windowsill for the day and kept it in the fridge at night. By the next day, the radish had started fermenting and had taken on the wonderful flavour of the spice mix.

My sister, not a big radish fan, used the pickle gravy on another green chilli pickle I had made. This spice mix could go well with almost anything you want to pickle. You could try carrots, cauliflowers, peas, capsicums.

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South Indian Gun Powder

If you have ever eaten South Indian food, you know what I am talking about. Molagapodi (moh-lah-ha poh-dee) is often served with Dosas and Idlis, but actually it can be eaten with almost anything. It's a reddish-brown scary looking powder, served smothered in sesame oil, often known for being overly spicy. Every Tamillian household makes their own version of it and you will never find the same taste anywhere even if the recipe is the same exact thing because not only does it depend on who is making it, it also relies on the level of spiciness and colour of the red chilli depending on the variety, the amount of time you spend roasting every ingredient and your mood when you are making it!

Moplagapodi literally means 'chilli powder' but I think Gun Powder is a more accurate description. It's actually a very cleverly disguised powder containing lots of protein (lentils) and calcium (sesame). There are numerous versions of this powder but I like to use my grandmother's recipe simply because I really really like her gun powder (and I am not alone).

My granny's Gun Powder with Dosas

Best served with hot Dosas and Idlis, sesame oil is added to it to tone down the spiciness. I prefer it without the oil. Why would you want to tone down anything that is spicy! You can alter the level of spiciness depending on your capacity by adding the chilli little bit at a time.

This is the way my grandmother explained the recipe to me. So I won't change it.

You need:

For 15 dry red chillies use the following measure. (I used organic red chillies that were pretty spicy)

1 small cup (standard 1/2 cup measure is what i used) Split chickpeas without the seedcoat (Chana Dal)

1 small cup white Urad Dal

2 small cups (1 cup measure) White Sesame (you can even use black sesame for a deeper colour and  better flavour)

Oil (Any oil that can be heated)

Asafoetida (hing) 1/4 teaspoon or more

Salt

A powerful dry grinder to make the powder

Wash the sesame and then roast it on a heavy bottom iron wok. The reason you wash it is so that when it starts to puff up while roasting it won't jump out of the wok. Keep stirring it around to make sure it is evenly roasted. Once it starts to make that splitting sound at frequent intervals and if it has become slightly darker in colour, it's done.

In the same wok, roast the Chana Dal and the Urad Dal one after the other till they are a very light brown  colour. Mix it with the roasted sesame.

Add oil to the wok and fry the red chillies. They will start puffing up quickly. Remove the Chillies and drain as much oil as you can while removing them.

Grind everything together. I like it to be a crunchy powder, so some tiny chunks are okay by me. Some people like it as fine as possible. Add in the salt and asafoetida. Mix well and transfer it into a bottle. Let it cool completely before closing the lid. This will stay for months outside.

Some people also fry Curry Leaves and add it while powdering. It adds some colour and lovely flavour to it.

 Clockwise from right: Fried Red Chillies, Roasted Sesame, Roasted Urad Dal and Roasted Chana Dal

It goes very well with south Indian food, but sometimes I like to add it to a vegetable I am cooking. It also goes very well with vegan yogurt so you can even make it into a dip. The possibilities are endless. I, however, catch myself eating this as it is.

My freshly ground Gun Powder

It is said, whoever is cooking adds their own flavours depending on their energies. That is why the same recipe made by two people will almost never taste the same. I still haven't gotten to my grandmother's level, but this batch got her approval!

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Right Side Up Banana Cake with pour over Coffee Caramel

It's Vegan Mofo Iron Chef Challenge #2 and Isa decided to spice things up by giving us two ingredients - Banana and Coffee. One I love, the other, well... 

I eat bananas everyday - in breakfast smoothies, as an evening snack, for dessert. Recently I even made gluten free pancakes using dried banana flour. 

So it's safe to say that I could survive on bananas if it ever came to that.

Coffee, well it ends there for me. Coming from a South Indian family, coffee is a very integral part of the day and it's freshly brewed (filter coffee) every single day in all kitchens. Tamillians cannot breathe without their coffee. They start the day (6am) with a hot cup of strong coffee, have one more by 11pm may be, another at 4pm and if they really are insane, then another one after dinner. My mom never allowed us to drink coffee (and tea). It just wasn't offered to us. Her father (a doctor and a coffee addict) used to warn everyone about the dangers of coffee while drinking his daily cup of coffee. And it was well known then that children don't need the caffeine high. [I don't know how that perception has changed now and how it is okay to 'caffeinate' your child every day (a la Gatorade, Coca Cola, Tea, Coffee, the works)]

So it's safe to say that I don't like coffee.

This challenge was tricky for me. Since I was already up to my neck in cakes today, I decided I would try to make something sweet out of it. Yeah I read the challenge, brownie points for savoury stuff, I had a brainwave and I had to do it. I had 4 friends coming over, so I had an audience for feedback which was nice. Feedback I got, it's all gone!

This is a dense cake that's best served warm, but it makes a nice cold dessert too. I prefer using whole wheat flour because it makes the cake dense and fulfilling. I added chocolate because, well who doesn't love chocolate? And the pour over Coffee Caramel added some gooey quotient to it. I suggest pouring the caramel just before serving, since the flavour of coffee tends to disappear quickly. 

Right Side Up Banana Cake with pour over Coffee Caramel 

For the Caramel:

I had a previous batch of caramel sauce I'd made from this recipe. It makes the most delicious caramel sauce ever.

I brewed some coffee and mixed one part coffee to two parts caramel. This was a mild mix, good enough for me. If you like coffee, then you could use equal quantities of both.

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 175C

1 Big Ripe Banana

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 a lime

1 tablespoon water

Cut the bananas into 1/2 inch thick slices.

In a saucepan, melt the sugar and water. Once it's melted, add in the lime juice. Pour it into the baking pan and spread. Arrange the banana slices to cover the entire bottom of the pan in an overlapping fashion.

Prepare the cake mix:

1 and a 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour

3/4 cup sugar or any sweetener

1/4 cup chunks of vegan chocolate

1/2 tsp Cinnamon Powder

1/2 tsp All Spice

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Corn starch

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup Soy Milk/ Water or any non dairy milk

1/4 cup oil

1 tsp vinegar

Combine wet and dry ingredients separately. Mix and fold the batter lightly. Add into the pan with the bananas and spread evenly.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Loosen the edges of the cake and invert it onto a grill. 

Slice, pour the Coffee Caramel on the cake and serve!

Mmmm Mmmm Mmmmmm!

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